Don't Take Our Word For It

By now, you have probably heard it plenty of times from us: Republicans continue to insist on confrontation over consensus, no matter the cost to our economy. We need a big, bold and balanced deficit reduction plan, but it takes two to tango. And the GOP is so allergic to compromise, House Republicans skipped town for another recess, with critical measures to keep our highways funded and student loan rates from doubling still unresolved.

But don’t take our word for it, just ask Republicans themselves; like former Florida Governor (and first brother) Jeb Bush and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who both are urging their party to drop the pledges and start working on solving this country’s most pressing problems.

“For the better part of three decades, there has been no more prominent family in Republican politics than the Bushes.”

“But tough talk about the state of the party on Monday by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — who went so far as to say that Ronald Reagan and his father would have a ‘hard time’ fitting in during this Tea Party era — exhibited a growing distance between the family, which until not very long ago embodied mainstream Republicanism, and the no-compromise conservative activists now driving the party.”

“Speaking at a breakfast with national reporters held by Bloomberg View in Manhattan, Mr. Bush questioned the party’s approach to immigration, deficit reduction and partisanship, saying that his father, former President George Bush, and Reagan would struggle with ‘an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement.’”

“…It is also a party and a political environment in which, Mr. Bush said Monday, even Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did — that’s the point of the context changing.”

“As a conservative Republican, Lindsey Graham has never had a problem promising not to raise taxes. Like almost every other Republican member of Congress, during his last re-election campaign, he signed the anti-tax pledge put forth by Grover Norquist's group Americans for Tax Reform.”

“But now Graham says the debt crisis is so severe that the tax pledge — which says no tax loopholes can be eliminated unless every dollar raised by closing loopholes goes to tax cuts -- has got to go.”

"’When you eliminate a deduction, it's okay with me to use some of that money to get us out of debt. That's where I disagree with the pledge,’ said Graham.”

"’…I just think that makes a lot of sense. And if I'm willing to do that as a Republican, I've crossed a rubicon,’ said Graham.”

Chastising Republicans for refusing to compromise and drawing lines in the sand over revenues? That refrain sounds so familiar…